Passing Semis in the Rain: A Tina Johnson Adventure

by Karen Goldner

  "What's going on?" I asked again, this time louder. "Susan?"

  "Be quiet," she said, "or I'll have one of my friends shut you up."

  The taller goon pulled some sort of cloth out of his pocket to illustrate. Teresa pulled away from him in protest. He squeezed her arm harder and her expression left no doubt that it hurt. I struggled against my chubby goon’s grip.

  “Quit hurting her.” My protest was met with laughter from the men.

  "A slightly bruised arm is not your problem right now," said Susan. "Your problem is that you know where the twenty million dollars is, and I want that money. You're going to get it for me."

  This was not the Susan I had met the previous evening. Or, at least, I would never have taken her for someone who would assault us and demand money that I didn't even know she knew about. My first instinct, which may have not been the best one, was to play dumb.

  "What money?" I asked. My chubby friend squeezed my arm very hard, but I did not give him the satisfaction of wincing.

  "You know damned well what money," Susan said. "It's the money that you've been looking for since you heard about it from the FBI in New Orleans. You talked with Christine Hamilton before she died; she had to have told you about it."

  I looked at Teresa, who was glaring at Susan. I said nothing. Our guards squeezed a bit, but otherwise we all stood there for a minute that seemed like an hour. Finally Susan gave.

  "And who the hell are you?" she said to Teresa. "If you were here for vacation you'd be at the beach. You're not. What are you up to?"

  Teresa looked at me for an answer. The fun of playing detective had evaporated.

  I thought a moment. The most effective lies always contain a truth. I waited until Mr. Chubby squeezed my arm again so they would think they were breaking me down. This time when he squeezed, I winced.

  "Okay, I did want the money," I said. "Christine told me about Kevin Andrews and even gave me an account number when she realized that she couldn't get away from the cartel. And we were going to try to get the money today, but we just found out that the account number Christine gave me was not a deposit account. She was a lying bitch at the end, which shouldn't have surprised me." I did not have trouble sounding bitter.

  "Who is she?" Susan kept the gun pointed at me and nodded toward Teresa.

  "She's a friend. She was going to help me. She actually was helping me, and that is how we found out the account number was wrong." There. I hoped that was enough truth to be persuasive, since it was about ninety percent of what we actually knew anyway.

  Susan frowned at my explanation, but appeared to believe me.

  "We were actually going to get changed into something more beach-y and have a drink when you called," I said. More truth. "If we can't get the money at least we can drown our sorrows."

  Still unhappy, Susan did not drop the gun.

  I did not need to fake the fear that she was going to tie up loose ends with us.

  "Hey, don't shoot the messenger, okay?" My laugh was very nervous. "We all got screwed by Christine, although I will point out that she screwed me the worst. She or that Andrews guy shut down my bank accounts so I no longer have any money at all. "

  Teresa had recovered her confidence and chimed in, using a severe tone I hadn't heard from her before. "Why do you think I'm here? My friend gets completely screwed by this woman and is stuck in Miami with nothing more than the little bit of cash she has left in her pocket. She'd be sleeping in her goddamned Vue if it weren't for me and my credit card. So I came to help about Christine's money, and I came to help my friend out of this mess."

  Teresa's speech was successful in that when Susan turned to listen, her hand holding the gun naturally moved a little and she loosened up the slightest bit. I thought about Mark's gun and tried hard to remember whether I had mentioned it to Susan when we talked last night. I couldn’t recall. I was glad that I had stuck my purse with the gun inside into a drawer. Even if she knew about it, its absence might help deescalate the situation.

  We all stood there. Mr. Chubby had let up the pressure on my arm a little bit. I hoped that Teresa's guy had done the same.

  Susan's phone rang. She ignored it, but it didn't stop. The goons each squeezed harder while she finally answered. She kept her eyes and her gun trained on me. Her end of the conversation was short and ended with "Yes, sir. We're on the way."

  "They're getting ready for the last meeting of the afternoon and they need us all there when they go to the reception. It's show time," she said to the goons.

  The chubby one smiled an ugly half smile. Susan holstered her gun and I could hear Teresa breathe as deeply as I was.

  "It's your word against ours, girls. And don't think we're done with this," she said. Her voice nearly dripped ice water.

  The goons released the handcuffs, pushed us back onto the couch, and left.

  "Saved by the bell," said Teresa.

  I did not laugh.

  We now knew that Susan was dirty, but were still at Square One as far as the money went.

  "She wouldn't have done this if she knew anything about how to get the money," I said as we sat on the couch, our interest in finding a bar having slipped away.

  "I wish we knew what she did know," Teresa mused. "Maybe there's a piece that we could make sense of that she can't."

  It suddenly occurred to me that my assumption about Moreno's protection had been based on his security people being honest. At least in the case of Susan and her goons, they weren't.

  "I wonder whether Charlie is in on it with Susan," I said.

  Teresa looked at me, puzzled.

  "The security guy who was hitting on me in the bar," I explained. "When I asked where Kevin Andrews had been going when he was killed, Susan said it was the ten thousand dollar question and nobody reacted to it—nobody laughed or winked. At the time I thought she was just using the expression. But maybe it was that she knew about the money and they didn't."

  "That seems like a longshot," Teresa said. "A comment like that doesn't prove they aren't working with Susan."

  I agreed, and we sat there for a few minutes, each of us staring past the other one's shoulder. I became aware of every detail on the light blue wall.

  "Maybe we need to go to the cops," Teresa finally said. "We could just make an anonymous tip or something." She shrugged her shoulders as if to ask, "What else is there to do?"

  "No. The cops will figure out a way to trace the call back to us and then we're screwed. We need to find someone else." The wall nearly began to glow, I was staring at it so hard. "We just have to do it ourselves."

  Teresa looked up at me as if I had said we needed to fly to Mars. "How do we do that? And don't you think that two girl detectives running around like Crockett and Tubbs would get the police's attention even more than if we called in from a payphone?"

  I tried to smile at her Miami Vice reference. "At least you didn't say Gina and Trudy." My chuckle was stillborn.

  Teresa ignored my attempt at humor. "What, exactly, do you want us to do to stop this assassination? We don't know when or how or who."

  "I'm still working on that," I said. And I was. I picked up Teresa's phone and called Shelly. It went to voicemail and I hoped that was only because she didn't recognize the number. I was right; Teresa's phone rang a minute later.

  "Thanks for calling. I was just going to call you." Shelly was excited. "Nikki spoke with her neighbor and the neighbor emailed Sarah Stapleton, who emailed back last night; but the neighbor didn't tell me until just now." Shelly paused. "It's not too late, is it?"

  "Possibly just in time," I said. I put Teresa's phone on speaker and told them both my plan.

  22

  The last time I'd been in a waitress uniform, I was ten years younger and ten pounds lighter. Joe had spent more money than we had on some ridiculous cars and we were more broke than normal. It was before I started cleaning for Theodore, and a friend worked at a nice banquet hall, so she got me in for a couple of shifts a week
. Although I exaggerated my resume to Sarah Stapleton, at least my catering experience was not a total lie.

  The servers for South Florida Private Dining, Inc., wore our own black pants and a black shirt that the company provided. It was embroidered with their logo and you actually had to sign for it, and they would only give you one. That would make it harder for somebody to impersonate a server in order to, say, assassinate a guest, I explained to Teresa. I was starting to think like a security person.

  I decided that the gun was best left at the condo. If I had it, the cops would conclude that I was the assassin. And since Teresa was going to be in an area where cars might be searched, we had the same concern for her.

  When I had called Sarah Stapleton ninety minutes earlier, she was frantic. A server had just called in sick. She barely had enough people to staff the reception, which was minutes away from starting, and was now one person short for dinner. She was thrilled to learn that the "friend of a friend" was looking for a job. I had no idea how my original message to Shelly was garbled that badly from Shelly to Nikki to the neighbor to Sarah Stapleton, but it turned out for the best. She asked me a couple of quick questions about my serving experience and told me to get to the employee entrance of the InterContinental ASAP.

  Teresa drove me to the security barricades, two blocks from the hotel. Sarah Stapleton had only needed one additional person, so Teresa would wait beyond the perimeter. Having a well-dressed professional-looking woman vouch for me if things turned ugly could be helpful. Teresa and I decided I might as well turn my phone back on so we could be in communication. If anyone was tracking me they'd see me at the hotel anyway.

  "Take my phone: it's smaller. They won't see it in your pocket," Teresa said. She turned it to vibrate and handed it to me.

  "But if my phone is being tracked they'll find you, sitting in the car."

  "I'll park in a busy lot somewhere," she said. "Tina, you don't have to take care of me. I'm becoming quite experienced at this."

  "Find a hotel and park right by the front door. And keep the doors locked." As if locking the doors would keep out a bullet.

  "I will. Don't worry. You're the one I'm worried about."

  "I'll be fine. I've worked dinners before," I joked as I hopped out of the Vue.

  Her broad smile was weak. "Be careful," she said, and I peered back through the passenger window at her. She was not smiling any more. "Call me when this is done, or when you're safe, or when Moreno is safe, or something."

  "I'll call you when it's over." I turned from the car and walked a block to the park where Sarah Stapleton told me to meet her. I didn't have the paperwork I would need to clear security, so she'd have to get me through.

  One uniformed guard stopped us, but he recognized Sarah and waved us around the barricades. We walked very quickly to the kitchen entrance in the back, where my embroidered black shirt was waiting for me. There were lockers where I stowed the one I had been wearing and my purse. Sarah told me to leave my cell phone in the locker, too, and I pretended to put it there before slipping it back into my pants pocket. I was glad to have Teresa's smaller phone.

  Right away I was introduced to Chad, my supervisor. He was tall, thin, and dark-haired, and reminded me a lot of Rupert Everett, the gay guy-friend in My Best Friend's Wedding. Except Chad was clearly the boss, not a friend. He put me to work making sure the tables were exactly perfect, which gave me a chance to figure out the lay of the land.

  The ballroom where the banquet was set was pretty much like any ballroom anywhere. I was surprised it wasn't huge. There were fifty round tables on the main floor, and then a long stage with a table that seated two dozen VIPs facing the rounds. There were two sets of doors on one wall opposite the stage. These were the main doors where dinner guests would enter. To stage right, there were normal-sized doors in the carpet-covered retractable divider which served as a wall; to stage left the only doors were to the kitchen. Men in dark suits were positioned around the outside of the room, their eyes taking in everything. Occasionally one of them would touch his ear or talk into his wrist.

  I asked Gabriela, a short Latina working next to me, who would be sitting on the stage.

  "That's where all the dignitaries sit," she said. "I think there are ten, plus spouses, plus a couple of other bigwigs."

  "Wow," I said in my best star-struck voice. "It would be so cool to serve them."

  "Not really," she said. "You're up on the stage where everyone can see if you drip water or drop something. I'm glad I'm down here with the regular people." She chortled at describing guests at a state dinner as "regular people" and moved on to the next table.

  I had wanted to be on the stage in order to speak with President Moreno, but Gabriela was right: that was the most conspicuous spot in the room. My hair was tied back and I was counting on the fact that people don't really look at wait staff to keep Susan from recognizing me. I figured that the alcohol and different context from last night would keep Charlie and the rest of the security detail from knowing who I was. However, being up on stage might be pushing it.

  I worked my way over to Gabriela and made some small talk. I wanted her to think I was chatty, not nosy. She was clearly suspicious of my just showing up, and I thought the best way to put her suspicions to rest was not to give her an explanation. After all, if I were just a last-minute fill-in, why would I have a story? That approach seemed to work, and she turned out to be chatty herself.

  After a few minutes listening to her complain about Chad, I asked whether she had worked VIP banquets here before. She had.

  "Chad gets even more uptight than normal," she complained. "Everything has to be perfect. See?" She pointed at him, scurrying around the tables straightening and re-straightening. She snickered as he nudged a dessert fork into position.

  "When do they come in?" I asked. This was the first question of my build-up. She glanced at her watch.

  "About ten minutes, I think," she said. She moved on to another table, and I followed her to a different one that was still close enough for us to talk.

  "Do you think there will be movie stars here?" I kept playing the star-struck angle.

  She shrugged. "There usually are a few." Now she was warming up to me and wanted to show off her knowledge.

  I was an appreciative audience. "Do they come in through the main doors?"

  "The celebrities? Yes, those." She nodded her head toward the doors in the back, the ones that faced the stage. "The big VIPs come in from the doors over there, in the dividing wall. The doors are locked until they come in, and then locked after they're seated. They stage the dignitaries in the other half of the ballroom, then bring them in all at once with a ton of security."

  I said something like "wow" to show how impressed I was, and hoped that she would keep talking. She did not, and moved to the next table. I joined her there and gave a critical eye to the water glasses. This next question was important.

  "Are they nice? The VIPs, I mean. Do they say anything to you?" I wanted to find out just how close we could get to them.

  Gabriela stood up as tall as she could. Apparently she had been saving the best for last. "One time the President shook my hand."

  "Of the United States? Really?" I did not have to pretend to be impressed. "When he was coming into the room?"

  She nodded and smiled, and then turned away as she spotted Chad walking toward us. Our focus returned to napkins and silver and glassware.

  "Gabriela," Chad said, "Why don't you and…" He glanced at me.

  "Tina," I offered.

  "Yes, you and Tina work nine and ten. You know what to do." He never stopped walking while he spoke, and moved on to another pair of servers a few tables away.

  "It sounds like you're the boss," I said. Having been put in a senior role, Gabriela stood tall, and I happily took my role as her understudy. Of course, the even better news was that tables nine and ten were closest to the divider wall, nearest to the entrance that President Moreno would use. We made sure th
at nine and ten were perfect and took our positions off to the side, by the carpeted wall, as the main doors opened and the guests filed in.

  It took just a few minutes for the tables to fill up. Guests must have been told to be seated right away, because I remember it taking a lot longer when I worked banquets in Omaha. Each table sat eight, and both of our tables were filled with couples who appeared more or less identical to the couples sitting at the other tables. The men were all in tuxedos, with hair that was either short, slicked back, or shaved bald. The women were all in expensive-looking cocktail dresses. They were generally thin and perfect. I felt like I was in the movie Wall Street, waiting for Michael Douglas to pop in with Darryl Hannah on his arm. It felt very eighties.

  As I followed Gabriela's lead and started asking diners about beverages, her at table nine and me at table ten, I kept half an eye on the door in the divider wall. Because our tables were on the far side of the room from the kitchen, we served iced tea from a station set up by that wall. It gave me a great reason to stay close as I carried a few glasses to my table.

  A voice suddenly boomed, "Ladies and gentlemen, our guests of honor will be arriving momentarily." A buzz filled the room. I looked up and saw a large white man, his tuxedo sporting a red lapel rose, speaking from the stage.

  I quickly served the last iced tea to my table. To avoid the distraction of any special orders, I quickly returned to my station. Just as I was going to have no choice but to turn around and face my table, the door in the carpeted wall opened and a small parade entered.

  There were three security guards at the beginning, beefy guys of various ethnicities whose common physical characteristics were huge chests and huge arms. There were a couple of Secret Service–looking types, thinner than the security people and with eyes that were constantly moving. Then someone dressed like a general walked in. He was followed closely by more huge men alternating with the other dignitaries, who were wearing either tuxedos or military dress uniforms.